Ricky Stanicky (2024) | REVIEW

Directed by Peter Farrelly — Screenplay by Jeff Bushell, Brian Jarvis, James Lee Freeman, Peter Farrelly, Pete Jones, and Mike Cerrone.

Green Book and The Greatest Beer Run Ever-director Peter Farrelly’s Ricky Stanicky is a comedy about three lifelong friends (played by Zac Efron, Andrew Santino, and Jermaine Fowler) who routinely get out of situations, meetings, life events, responsibilities, and the like, both from family, significant others, and their jobs, by using a created imaginary friend — the titular character (played by John Cena) — and inventing some circumstance that requires their presence, thus justifying their absence from whatever — to them — bothersome scenario gets in their way.

First things first, that title does this film no favors whatsoever. Ricky Stanicky isn’t as immediately recognizable a name as, say, Austin Powers or Ace Ventura, the character-inspired title feels more similar to back when Jonathan Levine’s Long Shot was almost called ‘Flarsky’ (also named after its main character). Ricky Stanicky isn’t as good as Austin Powers, Ace Ventura, or Long Shot, though. That said, it still had more than enough going for it that I enjoyed watching it last week. 

But I will say that there is so much about it that may be off-putting for some viewers, and there is even one major issue with the film that almost completely ruined it for me. When it comes to style, Ricky Stanicky is the type of American comedy that is full of crude jokes and gross-out comedy (and like most comedies, there are both hits and misses). It is also, however, the type of comedy where the main trio of characters aren’t very likable. I often insist that main characters don’t necessarily have to be likable people for a film to work — and I still feel that way — but I think a lot of people will be turned off by just how contemptible they are. 

After all, these are adult men who decide to lie about an imagined friend’s diagnosis as an excuse to leave their significant others at the height of one of their pregnancies, to blow off the baby shower, and instead go ballistic in Atlantic City. That is genuine asshole behavior, and, frankly, it feels less like an American comedy move and more like something a Sacha Baron Cohen character or the Danish Klovn-duo would do (for the uninitiated, Klovn is a Danish version of Curb Your Enthusiasm built around a friendship with an unequal power dynamic, crude/gross-out jokes, and often deeply amoral behavior).

For a while there, I thought this would be a film where most of the principal actors bombed and only one of them shone. Eventually, the principal main characters do earn some laughs, but there can be no doubt about who absolutely saves this film. Make no mistake, John Cena singlehandedly saved this film. Here he delivers such a good comedic performance that it elevates every single scene that he is in. His commitment to the bit is always so impressive, whenever he does a comedy (e.g. Clay Tarver’s Vacation Friends, James Gunn’s Peacemaker, or Kay Cannon’s Blockers), and Ricky Stanicky is a huge reminder of that. Seeing John Cena dressed head-to-toe like music artists and performing sexual/crude versions of popular songs becomes genuinely hilarious eventually, and even in scenes that shouldn’t work, it is John Cena’s perfectionism that makes it work.

Peter Farrelly’s Ricky Stanicky has a terrible title and some contemptible main character behavior, but it also includes a titular character performed so well that it singlehandedly saves the movie. John Cena is a genuine star in this adult comedy. I do think the central trio gets off a little bit too easy, that certain character background details or subplots are eventually strangely abandoned, and that Jermaine Fowler’s Wes is frustratingly sometimes left out of the main action, but despite all of these flaws, the film works because the filmmakers were smart enough to give Cena enough room to completely steal the movie away from everyone around him.

6.5 out of 10

– Review Written by Jeffrey Rex Bertelsen.